If Things Are Going Well I Can

I Remember, When I Was A Little Kid, I Was Good At Sports, And I Could Jump Off The High Board. And Then Puberty Hit, And Suddenly I Was Looking To Boys For Direction. I Remember That As A Great Loss.

With This Recitation Of Paraphernalia And Detritus, O'brien Manages To Encapsulate The Experience Of An Army And Of A Particular War, Of A Mined And Booby-trapped Landscape, Of Cold Nights And Hot Days, Of Soaking Monsoons And Rice Paddies, And Of The Possibility Of Being Shot, Like Ted Lavender, Suddenly And Out Of Nowhere: Not Only In The Middle Of A Sentence But In The Midst Of A Subordinate Clause.

What’s Strange Is How Many Beginning Writers Seem To Think That Grammar Is Irrelevant, Or That They Are Somehow Above Or Beyond This Subject More Fit For A Schoolchild Than The Future Author Of Great Literature.

Like Most-maybe All- Writers, I Learned To Write By Writing And, By Example, By Reading Books.

So Perhaps The Correct Conclusion Is That Green Was Less Attuned To How People Sound When They Speak - The Actual Words And Expressions They Employ - Than To What They Mean. This Notion Of Dialogue As A Pure Expression Of Character That...transcends The Specifics Of Time And Place May Be Partly Why The Conversations In The Works Of Writers Such As Austen And Bronte Often Sound Fresh And Astonishingly Contemporary.